The Black King (Book 7)

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Going to the Vault even now, six months after his father’s death, made Matt’s stomach turn.

  But if Matt was going to help Arianna, he would need to go. He needed to know how the tools from the religion worked. He knew in principle. His father—when he was sane—had discussed it enough at home.

  Magick is an abomination, his father used to say, and Matt often wondered how his father could believe it, considering his own powers. But his father had been a bundle of contradictions, most of which Matt still didn’t understand.

  The Roca understood that when he came back. He understood how magick destroyed those around it, so he devised tools that would eliminate magick from the Isle. And it worked, boys. We had no magick until the Fey came. Then we discovered, all over again, the tools the Roca had left for us, and we used them to defeat the Black King.

  Not all of that was true, of course. Over the years, Matt had learned that his father, even when sane, bent the stories to his own advantage. There was magick on the Isle. There had always been magick, at least since the Roca had discovered the Cave a thousand years ago. The Roca had simply taught the Islanders to fear it.

  The Vault was located at the base of the Cliffs of Blood and had been there as long as the mountains themselves. It was a natural cave, blocked off and protected by a structure built by the Roca’s successors. When the Roca returned, after being thought dead and rising to the hand of God, he lived in the Vault and never left it. There he wrote the Words in the form of a letter to his two sons, a letter that got misinterpreted and misunderstood as time went on.

  To get to the Vault, Matt had to go through the center of Constant. He took a circuitous route so that he could avoid his mother’s house. She was still alive, but she wasn’t dealing well with his father’s death. She had loved Matt’s father, despite the man’s madness, and his death had nearly ruined her.

  Sometimes Matt didn’t blame her for failing to fetch him the day his father decided to disappear into the mountains. His father had one last moment of lucidity. Neither Matt’s brother nor his mother saw fit to find Matt so that he could say good-bye, or maybe even talk his father out of walking into the caves, where the spirit of Arianna’s mother lurked.

  That spirit had tried twice before to kill Matt’s father, and he had survived through luck the first time and skill the second. Alex said that his father wanted to die this third time and that was why he went, but Matt didn’t believe that. He felt that his father had forgotten about the dangers, and was trying to reach the Roca’s Cave for a reason he never stated.

  The thin winter sun generated little heat, but it reflected off the stone roads, and made the center of town seem warmer than the outskirts. The slight breeze that blew off the river wasn’t getting past the stone buildings, so the air hung heavy. A storm was brewing; he could feel it. He wanted to be underground, away from everything when it hit.

  He made his way through the bazaar. Only a hardy few stood outside to hawk their wares. He knew most of them, and said hello as he passed. They’d long since stopped trying to patch the breach between him and his mother.

  She had actually come to the school to see him a few months ago. She had seemed diminished, somehow, her tall, angular body so thin that he could see her bones. Her eyes had sunken into her skull and the beauty that used to radiate from her was gone. Even her red hair, once her most striking feature, looked dull and almost brown.

  She had tried to apologize, saying once again that there hadn’t been time to send for him, saying that she had been so destroyed by his father’s death that she hadn’t even realized there was a rift between Matt and Alex.

  Matt hadn’t been able to speak to her. She had waited three months to come to him, and then she hadn’t offered a real apology. No one had even told Matt his father had died until he showed up at the house, days later. Nothing would ever change how he felt.

  The muscles in his shoulders were getting tight the closer he came to the Meeting Hall. A headache was starting to build, and he cursed himself. If he had studied the Words as a boy, like his father had wanted him to, he wouldn’t have to come here now. Coulter said there were religious items in the Roca’s Cave. Matt could have gone there. But he had studied just enough to know the overall history of the religion, and not enough to know how to use its tools.

  For that, he would need to face his brother, Alex.

  A man stepped out between the streets. He had long braided hair and scars all over his arms and face. He was thin and Fey, and familiar. Wisdom. He had obviously been looking for Matt.

  I hear you are leaving. Wisdom moved his hands to speak. Wisdom had lost his tongue—the source of his magick—to Rugad fifteen years before. He would not let anyone replace it, so he and Matt had developed a language of their own in sign.

  “Soon,” Matt said.

  Don’t, Wisdom said. Stay out of their business.

  “Why?” Matt asked.

  Because it will give you problems you will not want.

  “Coulter asked me to help.”

  Say no, Wisdom signed.

  “I already said yes.”

  Wisdom sighed. You are too young for this.

  “Arianna was my age when she became Black Queen.”

  And where is she now?

  “Don’t. You won’t get me to change my mind.” Then he hurried away before Wisdom could say anything else.

  Matt turned onto the street where the Meeting Hall was. It stood by itself, a windowless wooden building that had once been the center of Constant. After the Fey killed the Wise Ones inside the building, the village’s rulers moved to a different location.

  Matt climbed the steps and opened the door. It creaked. A smell—dampness, decay, and neglect—nearly overpowered him. He put a hand to his nose and stepped inside.

  Someone had cleaned up in the last six months. The broken furniture was gone, the cobwebs had disappeared, and there were new torches hanging in the torch holders. A lamp stood on a table beside the door. Matt removed the glass bell, used a flint to light the candle inside, and replaced the glass. Then he picked up the lamp by its base, and peered around the room.

  Not only had people cleaned, but they had refurbished. A new table stood in the center of the room, benches along the sides, just as it probably had been long ago. There were still empty corners, and the smell of disuse, but it looked like someone had been working to revive this place as a meeting hall.

  Matt’s heart began to pound. He went to the door that led to the Vault. The door was closed. His father used to keep it open—at his mother’s suggestion—so that he could leave quickly if he had to. Matt pulled on the knob, half expecting it to be locked.

  It wasn’t. The door slid open easily.

  The scent of newly cut wood greeted him. The stairs that had been rotting away had been replaced by new ones, so new, in fact, that the wood was still brown. The stairs went a long way down, to a corridor that was made of mountain stone, clean and dust-free. He had never seen this corridor clean before.

  He walked carefully, clinging to the lamp, appreciating the thin illumination that it provided. He followed the corridor to the bend in the middle, where the stones dripped with moisture. Here the smell and look were familiar: the wild smell of the mountain itself, a smell that always made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

  He associated that smell with his father. In the days before the madness had taken him over completely, his father used to come home smelling like this.

  The stone in this part of the corridor—and from now on—was the vibrant red of the mountain. Coulter said the mountain was alive. He said that through it came the magick that was bred into generations of Islanders.

  Matt knew what Coulter was talking about. As a child, Matt—attracted by the color—had chipped away at a bit of the red stone, and a small chunk had fallen into his hand, already gray. The gray was the same kind of gray a body turned after a person had died. Ever since then, the gray stones of the village made Matt
think of death.

  The stone changed as the ground flattened. This was the oldest part of the cavern, not made of piled stones but literally carved out of the rock. He was in the cave, the one where the Roca had actually lived.

  Matt braced himself, and went deeper. A few steps farther and he felt it: the song, as his father used to say. The call of the mountain. It was a lure, begging him to come closer, begging him to disappear deep into the mountain, just as his father had done. And, as his father had taught him when he was a little boy, he shook his head and willed the feeling to go away.

  It didn’t, but it lost some of its power.

  Maybe this was what his father had felt. Maybe this was what his father could no longer deny.

  Matt turned a corner, and saw the door to the Vault. It was standing open, and a square of light from inside poured into the corridor.

  His heartbeat increased even more. He was shaking. He made himself take a deep breath. Alex was probably inside. And Matt would have to face him. He couldn’t tell Alex the truth, and he didn’t have a lie prepared. Maybe he would tell him a partial truth, and that would be good enough.

  Or maybe his brother wouldn’t care why Matt had come. Maybe he would just be happy that Matt was there. Maybe he would apologize and all would be right between them.

  Matt stepped inside.

  The room was warm, as usual, and smelled faintly of smoke. Torches burned in their holders. Furniture was scattered around, chairs, tables, a bed in the corner. In the last few years of his father’s life, the furniture had been ripped and overturned. The entire room stank. But none of that remained.

  He set down the lamp and ran a hand through his curls. The door to the Vault was closed. It was a small wooden door, unpretentious, with a single handle. It hadn’t been closed in his father’s day. It was always open, the unnatural light from the Vault spilling into this room.

  He made himself walk toward it, made himself grab the handle, made himself turn and pull it.

  The door opened, and the light covered him.

  It was a white light that seemed to come from the walls themselves. It was warm and friendly and it terrified him.

  It always had.

  He stepped inside, and looked at the stone altar in the middle of the room. No one stood behind it. That startled him. He had expected to see Alex there, watching him, but the room was empty.

  Or, at least, it seemed empty. His brother might have gone down one of the corridors that branched off the back, the corridors their father had forbidden them to step into, the corridors their father had actually disappeared down the last day of his life.

  A tear ran down Matt’s face. He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, and took another deep, shuddery breath. There was no reason to mourn his father. His father hadn’t been a real father for years. He had been an embarrassment, to himself, his family, his sons.

  He had had the deepest laugh Matt had ever heard.

  Matt blinked hard and made himself concentrate. Nothing had changed. The beautiful tapestries still hung on the walls, depicting scenes from the Roca’s life. The table was still set up for the Feast of the Living, the silver bowls in the center of the table sparkling as if they had just been polished. Vials of holy water sat on free-standing shelves, and swords lay between them. Suspended from the ceiling in an arching pattern were the globes for the Lights of Midday.

  The bottles lining the wall to his left glowed redly. Inside, he knew, was blood, supposedly the Blood of the Roca, stored for hundreds of years. Drums hung from one of the pillars. Skin, supposedly human skin, was pulled across them. As boys, he and Alex were forbidden to touch everything, and the only thing they didn’t want to touch was the drums.

  Finally, he looked at the dolls. They were small, made of hand-blown glass. They seemed eerily alive, and always had. His father used to tell of the day when he took one of the dolls, placed drops of blood inside, and carried it into the cavern so that he could capture the soul of the Fey woman who had tried to kill him.

  Now Coulter wanted Matt to do the same thing. To save that woman’s daughter.

  Matt shuddered. It meant carrying the dolls. It meant getting close to the Black King, and actually using the weapon. It meant testing himself on levels he hadn’t even imagined before.

  Coulter had told him that he didn’t have to do this. But Matt had thought of Arianna, whom he liked. She wasn’t evil, like her mother had been. She was a good woman who meant a lot to the country. Who meant a lot to him.

  He shook himself slightly and crossed to the altar. The stones embedded in the white floor glowed as his boots touched them: ruby, emerald, sapphire, diamond, and then the two his father had no name for, the black stone and the gray stone, both with the brilliance of jewels.

  Matt reached the altar, but didn’t touch it. He knew the gold veins running through it would glow when he did, the acknowledgement of a heritage that descended directly from the Roca. Meaning that Matt was distantly related to Queen Arianna. She was the descendant of the Roca’s eldest son. He was a descendent of the younger.

  He’d always thought that strange. The blood still told, all these centuries later.

  The Words were open before him, the handmade paper as new as if it had just been finished. The ink on its surface seemed barely dried, even though the Roca had written the letter a thousand years before.

  In ancient Islander.

  Matt had forgotten that. He knew the language, but poorly. His father had insisted on teaching them how to read it, and like everything to do with this abominable religion, Matt had learned just enough to get by, but that was not going to be good enough now. The Secrets he needed were outlined in these Words, and he couldn’t read them well enough to understand them.

  “It’s easier to read the Words if you place your hands on the altar.”

  Matt looked up. His brother stood in the doorway. Matt no longer felt as if his brother were a mirror image of himself. Alex wore a robe, like his father used to. He had gotten taller, his curly hair long. He was thinner than he had ever been, almost as if he forgotten to eat, and his eyes, once a clear blue, were hooded and dark.

  “I didn’t think you were here,” Matt said.

  “I come every day.” There was an accusation in those words, although Matt wasn’t exactly certain what it was. “Are you here to steal the Words? Or have you finally come to your senses and left your Fey friends?”

  Matt stayed behind the altar. It felt like protection. “Actually, I’m here to learn more about the religion.”

  “So that you can learn how to protect your friends from it?” Alex crossed his arms.

  Bile rose in Matt’s throat. “Why do you hate me so much?”

  “I don’t hate you,” Alex said. “I hate the company you keep.”

  “Why?” Matt asked. “They’re good people. They’ve helped me. They wanted to help you.”

  “They’re turning you into an abomination.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t seen me in months.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to come home.”

  “You kicked me out of the house.”

  “You left on your own.”

  “After you and Mother made it clear I was no longer wanted.”

  Alex’s eyes glinted. “You’re still angry about the day Father died? Mother and I both told you that there was no time to get you. She went all the way to the horrible place you’re living just to talk to you.”

  “She talked,” Matt said. “She didn’t apologize.”

  “There was nothing to apologize for. If anyone needed to apologize, it was you. You left her when she needed you the most. And if you’d been here more often in Father’s last year, you would have known how sick he was. How unhappy.”

  Matt stared at his brother. Once they had been so close they seemed to know each other’s thoughts.

  That had been a long time ago.

  “What do you want?” Alex asked.

  “An apology,” Matt
said. “An attempt at understanding me.”

  “I understand,” Alex said. “You’re on a path that will lead you to the same madness that took our father.”

  “You’ve Seen that?”

  “Yes.”

  “With Vision, like the Fey have.”

  Alex’s lips pursed. “It was a divine message.”

  So that was the explanation now. “A message from God?”

  Alex shrugged. “Mother says I lead the religion now. Father wanted me to do that.”

  “Father was crazy.”

  “Not at the end.”

  “So you say.”

  “If you’re not going to steal the Words, what are you here for?”

  “Answers,” Matt said softly.

  Alex’s eyes narrowed. “Answers about what?”

  “I need to know how these things work. I want to do what the Roca said, take some power away from those who misuse it.”

  “You’re going to attack the Fey?”

  Matt nodded.

  Alex took a step closer. His right foot brushed the ruby, sending a red glow throughout the room.

  “You’d betray your friends?”

  “Not all Fey are bad,” Matt said.

  “Just the ones your friends point to.”

  Matt swallowed again, trying to keep the bile down. “Please, I can’t tell you any more.”

  “Then I can’t help you.” Alex’s face looked odd in the red light. “If you decide you want to leave them, I’ll do everything I can for you.”

  “Alex.” Matt put his hands on the sides of the altar. Golden light flared like a thousand candles. “The world isn’t as black and white as you make it out to be. Come meet some of my friends. Get to know a few Fey. Please learn how some Islanders can hurt people, and some Fey would never think of it. Come experience more of life than this tiny room.”

  “It’s not tiny,” Alex said. “The whole world exists in here.”

  Matt closed his eyes. It didn’t help. He still felt as if something were breaking inside him.